Au Pair Rates in SW18 Post Reply

[Bee@lifeafterlondon]

Hello
I'm looking to employ an au pair or au pair plus but am currently confused by the going rate. Is any one able to help me please. One friend is paying £80 for 25 hours a week, another seems to pay £100 for the same. I'm thinking of asking someone to work about 30-35 hours a week and obviously don't want to under pay but equally don't want to be silly about it. Any thoughts would be very helpful before I start the advertising process.

Thanks so much.

[CornishMummyinLondon]

Hello there

I pay my Au Pair £100 a week for up to 35 hours and up to two nights babysitting. In reality she probably does around 28 - 30 hours and one night of babysitting but I wanted to have the option to up and down her hours as and when I needed it. I had a good look on gumtree to see what other people were paying at the time and this seems pretty standard. I've seen people pay £110 for the same amount of hours but as little as £85.

I hope that helps.

[lamj1974]

hi - we pay our au pair £100 pw for around 28 hours + £30 a week for food. She also does up to two nights babysitting included in that. We decided to pay a tiny bit more as i have 2 small babies, so i wanted somebody with a bit of experience. Hope that helps. We found ours on Gumtree and it's worked out really really well.

[Notyetamum]

Is that for a live in or live out nanny?

[Bee@lifeafterlondon]

thanks so much, really useful replies.
It's for a live in to answer the last question.
Thanks again.

[brihoney]

I'm considering this as well at the moment. I think you generally pay a bit more if you want more experience if you need them to look after young children or babies. I saw some mention that there are different tax / NI responsabilities if they are doing more than 25hrs but not sure if that's true?

Hope anabelle doesn't mind me mentioning another site but I registered on aupairworld.net and got lots of interest, including some v experienced people (pediatric nurse from czech rep! I might need a bit of help w a new born so relevant to me...) Not sure if you have to pay to finalize arrangement or not on there. Apart from gum tree, how else have folks found aupairs?

Cheers

[katerobson]

Hello

I have had au pairs that I paid £80 for 35 hours a week. I cooked her meals though so she had no other costs - it's all negotiable. The one thing I would stress though is that au pairs are usually not qualified in the way that a nanny is. They are generally well-meaning young women who want a cheap way to see the country and learn the language. Most of them have moved out of the family home for the first time and are inexperienced in the ways of running a home, let alone a family. As an extra pair of (supervised) hands around the house, they can be a real help, but that's all. Hope that helps and good luck with your search!

Kate

[CheekychappieMum]

I use the london nanny and au pair agency. They recommend £70 for 25 hrs/week and £100 for 30 hours/week. Both include 2 nights babysitting. I buy her food. She gets a good mobile phone deal from the agency. The placement fee is a hefty £345 but it's obviously refundable if things don't work out for her or us. I'm happy to pay the fee on that basis. Any overtime is payable at £3.50/hr so it's not too expensive if you want to go out more than 2 nights/week. All the girls are CRB checked, have medical checks and other than that you just have to go on gut instinct from a telephone call. This agency charges the least amount which is why we went for it! For us it has been fantastic having a live in au pair..........no more briefing babysitters, you can go out to parties/functions at 6.30 pm..........we made it clear that they are to eat dinner between 7-8 pm and then leave the downstairs area for us. They usually prefer to get back on skype asap rather than play gooseberry over dinner with their employers so not much of a problem there! If you have an under 1 it is important that you don't mention that you intend to leave the child in sole care of the au pair as most agencies will not allow you to do that. Just say that you're looking for an extra pair of hands and trust your own judgement on whether to leave the baby or not.

Good luck.